


For What It's Worth

by glyph_of_wolves



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, Ghosts are dead people, Hurt Danny, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Tucker and Sam are good friends, danny phatom rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-27 15:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30125151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glyph_of_wolves/pseuds/glyph_of_wolves
Summary: Danny Fenton is a ghost. Sort of. Not really. He's honestly not sure right now. And between school, hiding his identity from his parents, and battling the restless dead, he doesn't really have much time to think about it.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi folks! A few notes before we get started: this is a canon divergent fic where I shamelessly change Danny Phantom to make it better for me personally. We'll follow the general plot progress of the show, at least for a lot of season 1, before veering off wildly into the unknown, while also including a lot of new/changed details. This is a reveal fic, but it won't be for a while. Also Wes is gonna be here cause I just think he's neat. I didn't tag all the ghosts cause none of them are gonna be central to any story beats but you can assume most of them will be here (except you clockwork. I'm sorry I can't deal with time travel) Also there mayyyy be romance later down the line? but probably not because it's not something I want the story to focus on. Though everyone on team phantom is queer i dont make the rules.
> 
> I will also be honest: this may not be completed, and that is determined both by how many people like it and also how busy college is.

_ “Actually dad, I want to be an astronaut” _

_ ‘Oh, who am I kidding,’  _ he thought as he was slammed into the concrete by a metric ton of half frozen meat,  _ ‘At this rate, I’m not going to make it to college’.  _ The pressure lifted off his chest and he took a deep breath, shakily sitting up. 

“Oh! Are you alright, Dearie?” The old woman’s voice called softly from the edge of the crater she’d made using his body as a meteorite. He gasped a bit as he lifted himself up, and shit his spine hurt, but as he stood to crawl out of the hole he could tell that nothing was broken.

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” he said without actually thinking, and honestly shouldn’t have been surprised when she just yelled at him and immediately called for little monsters to swarm and attack. 

_ ‘I want to say this is something a ghost shouldn’t be able to do,’  _ he thought as they buried him in ground beef,  _ ‘but what do I know?”. _ A surge of adrenaline washed over him as his vision disappeared and a wave of energy pulsed from his middle, sending them flying backwards. He leapt into the sky, flying desperately away from the ghost. 

_ ‘Think, Fenton, come on, what’s the plan?’  _ He didn’t have one. Honestly it was pure dumb luck when he saw his dad holding that stupid thermos. He barely managed to yell out a “Thanks!” as he flew by and grabbed it out of his hands. He ignored the excited shouting behind him. He had more pressing things to deal with. He flew back towards the ghost, opening the thermos and aiming it as best he could.

“Please work,” he whispered, and pressed the button labeled ‘activate’. A beam of light shot from the device, latching on to the ghost as she screamed and wailed, her form stretching and warping as she was sucked into the thermos. He slammed the cap back on as soon as the last of her form disappeared, before letting himself fall to the ground. A warm electric feeling washed over him as he felt his power fade.

“Danny!” He let out a sigh of relief at the sound of his friends racing up to him. 

“Dude, way to go! You kicked that ghost’s ass!” Tucker started, before being cut off by Sam.

“Danny are you ok? We saw you fall,” She said, glancing over him as if she expected to see a bone sticking out of him. 

“I’m fine, and I-” Danny stopped himself, quickly hiding the thermos behind him as his parents came sprinting around the corner. 

“Where’s the ghost kid?” Jack Fenton barked, Maddie sprinting right behind him.

“Ah, sorry dad,” Danny said nonchalantly, pointing away from the school with the hand that wasn’t hiding the thermos, “You just missed him”.

“We got a runner!” Jack shouted, and Danny watched as his parents took off after a ghost that wasn’t there. He watched as his sister looked after them, annoyed, and stomped off. Sam and Tucker glanced at him with odd expressions. He let out a breath. 

“No, I’m not telling them. Now can someone go grab my sister? I need her to drive me home.”

  
  
  


Danny thought it was lucky that he managed not to fall asleep in the car ride home. Jazz was ranting about their parents being impossible and obsessive, and Danny snorted when she said, “That kid was probably just playing a prank or something, there’s no way he was actually flying that fast,” because he could hear the doubt in her voice. When they got home, he stumbled a bit out of the car and hissed a bit as his side moved. 

“You ok, Danny?” Jazz called. 

“Fine, Jazz,” he mumbled, standing straight and heading for the door from the garage to the kitchen, “I’m uh, I’m going to go get some homework done, let me know when mom and dad get back from ghost hunting.” He darted through the door before she had a chance to respond. 

Once up in his room, Danny went into the bathroom and lifted up his shirt a bit to see if any bruising had transferred over from the hits he took. He was partially relieved to see no visible injuries, but annoyed because his side still hurt like hell. He grabbed some ibuprofen from his medicine cabinet and went back to his room. He laid down, feeling a bit bad that he wasn’t doing his homework like he had told Jazz, but he was just… so tired. He felt like he’d run a marathon. Flew a marathon. Whatever. This is the most he’d used his powers since the accident, and he didn’t really know how to feel. Was this what his life was now? Was he built for fighting ghosts? It felt good to save people, sure, but he’d never really been into ghost hunting before this. He stared at the plastic stars on his ceiling as an uneasy feeling washed over him. He didn’t even notice he’d started floating until someone knocked on his door, startling him and causing him to drop out of the air, bouncing on his bed a bit as he landed. 

“Who is it?” He called, rolling off his bed.

“It’s me,” Jazz said from the other side of the door, “Mom and dad are home and they wanted you to come downstairs,” Danny opened the door.

“Why?” He asked, and Jazz sighed in response.

“Probably want to talk about that ghost again,” She muttered, he guessed more for herself than for Danny based on the tone. 

The pair wandered down the stairs to the kitchen, where Danny could see his dad fiddling with his net and his mom typing something into that ghost tracker that had nearly blown his whole secret wide open. Thank god for oblivious parents. 

“Hi honey!” His mom smiled at him, “Don’t worry about this thing, I’m just trying to recalibrate it so it stops beeping at you. No doubt since you’ve been in the lab so much recently there’s just a bit too much ectoplasm around you. You should really wear that suit we got for you more often.” Oh, they had  _ no _ idea. 

“Danny!” His dad cried out, “You missed a great chase today, we didn’t catch that ghost, but- can you believe it? A real ghost kid! Flying at, what did you say honey, 50 miles an hour? What a sight!” Danny nodded in response, carefully avoiding eye contact.

“Now, Jack, we don’t want to get too excited. And Danny, try to avoid the ghost if you see him again. Considering he stole tech he could be dangerous.” Maddie replied.

“I mean, he saved the school from that meat monster, he can’t be all bad,” Danny said, unsure where it was safe to stand in this conversation. He wasn’t expecting his whole family to turn and look at him at once. 

“What meat monster?” Three voices asked in unison. Oh right. 

“You know… the meat monster. Speaking of, I’m starving. Does anyone want to order pizza?” He cringed inwardly a bit.  _ ‘Nice redirect, Fenton. Real smooth.’  _

At least it wasn’t a lie. He was really hungry.

  
Later that night, after convincing his family that yes, there was a monster, and yes, the ghost kid had gotten rid of it, and enjoying a cheese pizza from the place down the street (he really couldn't stomach peperoni right now), he was back to laying in his bed, head up, staring at the stars glowing green in the dim light. He lifted his hand above his head and shifted, watching as he started glowing as well. He smiled.  _ 'Maybe it isn't so bad,'  _ he thought.  _ 'I can be the first superhero to get to space. _ ' He lets out a quiet laugh.  _ 'The first ghost.' _ With that last thought, he shifted back, knowing there was always a chance that someone could come check on him, and fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can you get extra credit for ghost fighting? Let's find out. 
> 
> Welcome back to the *slightly* modernized and gritty Danny Phantom Reboot the CW won't give me.

The day after the lunch lady, Danny woke up to a dragon. It was actually a medieval princess, but she’d definitely been a dragon at first, which sucked. Then he’d had a cursed necklace, and by the end of the week two new people had turned into dragons. Which was really just his luck. 

He hadn’t been able to rest after dealing with that issue either, because at some point during the weekend things had decided to just start coming out of the portal at random. Mostly they were animal ghosts, some deer or mice or squirrels, and they weren’t that hard to deal with. It really just made Danny feel bad. He’d always turned away when they drove by roadkill, now he had to deal with their haunted remains on the daily. Sunday night they’d dealt with the box ghost, and he didn’t feel guilty for dealing with that creep. If you’re going to haunt a warehouse at least come up with a better schtick. By the time Monday came around, he was exhausted. 

“Danny, are you sure you can even take this test? You look dead on your feet,” Sam asked at lunch. Biology was the last period of the day and they all knew that Danny had been up all night- no amount of studying helps if you fall asleep on your desk. Danny looked up at her from where he’d been staring into his milk carton, imagining it glowing green and flying around.

“I am, thanks for noticing.” Both of his friends rolled their eyes at that. “And what am I supposed to do, go to the nurse for being ‘too tired’? Seriously?” Danny tried to keep his tone light and joking, but his exhaustion must have slipped in because both Tucker and Sam frowned at him. “I’m pretty sure I heard she'll send you back to class if your symptoms are anything less than 102 degree fever,” Danny griped. 

Tucker nodded. “Yeah, I heard some kid got food poisoning last week and she just gave him a plastic bag and some tums and sent him back to gym.”

“See? I’ll be fine,” Danny gestured to Tucker. Sam was obviously not loving this plan, and Danny could already see the gears turning in her head on how she was going to convince the school to make the nurses office more accessible to people without life threatening illnesses, but considering he didn’t think she’d be able to do that in the next hour, he wasn’t going to torture himself with hopes of getting out of biology. 

Danny knew what his grade was before he even got the paper back. Sure, he didn’t know it was going to be a 72 out of 100 exactly, but he knew it wasn’t going to be great. When Mr. Falluca handed him back the paper at the end of class, he stopped. 

“Mr. Fenton, you know, I do offer extra credit if you want to boost your grade. If you want to visit the zoo sometime this next week and write a short paper I’d be willing to give a few points back.” The older teacher said pleasantly. Danny glanced down at his paper, and thought about the last few grades he’d gotten on homework.

“Sure, Mr. Faluca, I think I can do that. Thanks,” Danny tucked the paper into his bag and slipped out of class as his teacher waved him off. 

  
  


“Why are we at the zoo, again? At night?” Tucker asked, voice ringing out over the sound of the game he was playing on his DS. They were sitting on the gorilla building, Danny taking notes and Sam trying to… possibly telepathically communicate with the gorilla on the other side of the glass. He ignored Tucker.

“Sam, what are you doing?” He asked, weirded out by the staring contest she seemed to be having with the back of the primates head.

“Trying to tell if it’s being taken care of. Most zoos are good about taking care of their animals and they do good in areas like conservation and life expectancy, but you can never be too careful.” 

“Do you think I could write about that for my paper?” He asked

“Sure,” She replied, though Danny could tell she wasn’t really listening. Tucker's game let out a loud beeping sound and Danny gritted his teeth.

“Tucker, can you turn that down? I can’t think,” he looked up to see Tucker looking at him nervously. 

“Uh… that wasn’t me.” Danny’s breath fogged in front of him. He whipped around. And then Danny Fenton was smashed through the glass of the enclosure.

The sound of the impact let out a crunching noise and if he hadn’t gone ghost on instinct when he felt the rocket-  _ ‘a ROCKET?!?’-  _ he’d be worried about his bones. His back and stomach hurt, but from what he could tell from his new spot on the grass with the sound of screaming gorilla and friends in his ear, most of the glass had phazed through him, and the rocket hadn’t actually stabbed him. Though it was beeping even louder now as it lay next to him. 

There was a robot in front of him. Huh. Maybe he did have a concussion. 

“There you are, ghost child.” It said, in what was certainly the most genuinely threatening of the antagonizing voices he’d heard in the last few weeks. 

“Aha,” Danny laughed a little nervously, “Sorry, do I know you?” 

“I am skulker, whelp, the ghost zones greatest hunter, and you,” The ghost’s mechanical mouth grinned, and he hefted what looked disturbingly like a hunting rifle if it was from Star Trek, “You will be my greatest trophy yet.” 

“Uh, yeah, I’ll pass.” Danny lifted his arm and green energy swirled and sparked around his fist “Nice to meet you though. Happy hunting,” He let the ecto blast fly and, surprising both Skulker and himself, knocked the rifle out of the ghost’s hands. He didn’t have time to celebrate though. He pulled himself up and darted into the air, flying over Skulker’s head and grabbing his friends by the arms from where they were standing shocked in the observation room. 

“Time to go!” 

“Wait, wait, wait!” Tucker pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the very angry ghost, and shrugged when Danny and Sam stared at him, “Do you want the zoo to sue you for property damage? Gotta have proof you didn’t smash the window.” The beeping started up again.

“I think I have bigger things to worry about!” Danny went intangible as another rocket passed by, “We’re leaving!” and with that, he pulled his friends through the wall and into the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! Thanks for reading. Had a bit of a time looking over episode synopses for this one since I'm pretty sure One of a Kind comes after Parental Bonding but I think google mixed them up. Also I made Faluca the biology/science teacher because lancer cannot teach every subject this is a high school come on. I also split this chapter in half cause it ended up being longer than I thought so you can expect another one later today or tomorrow. 
> 
> Another note: While this doesn't take place in 2004, it's not this year either. Think circa 2015.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny learns a bit more about the thing he *might* be. 
> 
> tw: slight gore and depictions of violence closer to the end

Danny knocked on the Foleys’ door, and tried not to appear as out of breath as he felt when Angela opened it.

“Oh! Hi, kids, you’re back a little early. How was the zoo?” She asked, looking them up and down, and Danny was about to reply when Tucker went ahead. 

“Mom! You won’t believe it, some crazy guy came running into the building and started breaking everything!” The adult’s eyes widened. 

“Are you ok?” She gasped, ushering Tucker inside. She looked at the other two “Do you want me to call your parents? I’m not sure I want you walking home alone if there’s someone causing trouble.” 

“We’re fine,” Danny and Sam responded immediately. Danny glanced at Sam. They were probably thinking the same thing; Danny could fly Sam home without alarming her overbearing parents, and he was probably safer going back home along and invisible without people trailing behind him. Angela looked at them disbelieving but nodded her head. 

“If you’re sure, but make sure to call someone right away if you see him again. Don’t try to deal with him yourself.”

“You got it, Mrs. Foley,” Danny happily replied,  _ ‘Though I should figure out how to deal with him before he breaks anything else. Or breaks me,’  _ he didn’t say. 

When Danny got home, the only person in the living room was his sister doing some homework. She looked up at him and pulled out one of her earbuds.

“Oh hey Danny. You’re home early,” she said, with her tone asking the question of why without actually asking. Danny chose to ignore the unspoken curiosity.

“Yeah, I finished my paper. Where are mom and dad?”

“Well, mom’s at an interview for that science magazine she was talking about the other day, remember?” He didn’t, though he could vaguely recall Jazz excitedly depositing a lot of magazines on the breakfast table as ‘required reading’ a few mornings ago. “And dad’s in the basement working on some ghost tech. I wouldn’t go down there if I were you,” she advised, as Danny walked through the door to the kitchen and headed for the lab.

Jack Fenton was sitting on a swivel chair, tinkering with something that looked like a mix between a handgun and car engine, which Danny wasn’t excited about. He elected to ignore it. 

“Hey dad, can I ask you a question?” 

“I’m a little busy right now, son.” Jack said through gritted teeth as he tightened a screw, not looking up.

“It’s about ghosts,”

“Well then why didn’t you say so! What’s on your mind?” Immediately he spun around, Danny barely jumping out of the way as the wrench he was holding came with him. Danny hesitated.

“Ghosts are… dead people. Or animals. Right?” He asked.

“In layman’s terms, sure! They’re more like ectoplasmic echoes of the dead, not quite all there.”

“Right, so do you know why a ghost wouldn’t look like a ghost?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I… it’s not like I’ve seen that many,” he started, making a mental note to start tallying how many ghosts he was fighting in a week, “but like, that ghost kid that we saw looked mostly like a kid, like, he was identifiable as a person even if he’s a ghost. Or... oh! The ghost rats that you caught in the lab last week! Those were definitely rats.” His dad nodded. “So what would make a ghost look nothing like they did when they were alive? Or not just a specter of what they were? What would cause it to change?” Jack leaned back in his chair and hummed, and Danny was surprised with how serious he became. 

“I’ll be honest Danno, your mother and I haven’t seen that many ghosts, so I don’t have any solid information to give you. But, my best guess based on our theoretical research is that ghosts are powered by obsessions, something that keeps them going. Sometimes it’s related to how they died or something they cared about a lot in life. And if a ghost got too consumed by its obsession, it would warp into something that was more accurate to the image it had of itself in its mind. Like some of the ghost rats were just rats, but if one of them had an obsession with eating cheese? Then eventually it might grow extra mouths or a stronger nose. Imagine that! Why? Did’ya see something weird?” Jack asked. Danny glanced away. Might as well go all in on his secret identity. 

“No, not really. I was just thinking.” Jack narrowed his eyes and stared at him, and Danny let himself lean away slightly under the scrutiny. But Jack just spun back around.

“Alright, but let me know if you see anything! Your mom and I would love to get a real specimen in here to play around with,” he laughed.

Danny gulped and walked back up the stairs, heading straight to his room. 

As he crossed the threshold of his bedroom, he heard a snapping sound, and barely bit out half a curse before he was trapped in a glowing web, pinning him to the floor. It pressed into his skin, and while it didn’t choke or cut into him, he couldn’t move without straining. 

“Following prey back to its den is always a risk, but you are almost making this too easy, ghost child,” Skulker’s metal frame is barely visible in the dim room, backlit by the bright lamp at the end of the hall. “What a shame.” 

Danny gritted his teeth. He’d had his powers for less than two months, and Skulker wanted to complain that he wasn’t good enough? Well if this asshole wanted a fight, he’d give him a fight. 

Going ghost and immediately falling through the floor worked like a charm. Springing back up behind Skulker less so, since the ghost sensed his attack and blocked his kick, but Danny still gave himself points for the move. The fight… wasn’t that exciting in Danny’s opinion. Skulker seemed hesitant to use his rockets in close quarters, so it very quickly dissolved into a fist fight- Danny darting around to land blow after blow in quick succession, each hit just barely denting the metal, and Skulker occasionally landing a hit from his giant fists that left Danny’s insides rattled. With all the noise they were definitely making, he just felt lucky that Jazz had music playing and his dad was working on his own metallic project. As he had that thought, though, his fist connected with something. A seam in the plates. His eyes widened as his fist went through, physically making the metal bend inward and apart. Skulker froze for just a second, and that gave Danny all the time he needed to get both his hands inside the thick metal plating and pull. The sheeting came away easily, and Danny wondered how strong the armor had actually ever been. 

The rest of the robotic suit clunked to the ground before dissolving into mist, and Danny dropped the plates he held as they faded. He stared forward at what now stood in his bedroom. Danny had known Skulker was a ghost. But seeing his true form sent a shiver down his spine unlike the fear he’d felt at the murder machine that had attacked him at the zoo. 

A man stood in the center of his room. His sunken eyes glowed a sickly green in the dim light and his skin was sunken and see through, his old flannel torn and darkened with ectoplasm. Danny swallowed hard when he saw the arrow tip sticking out of the center of his neck. The man snarled.

“I am the greatest hunter the ghost zone has ever seen,” he hissed, “I will have your head on my wall,” He shook with rage, but didn’t move, floating and dripping onto the blue carpeted floor. Carefully, Danny leaned over the side of the bed where his school bag had gotten tossed in the chaos and pulled out the Fenton Thermos. He would have laughed as he realized it was like trying not to spook a deer, but he stayed completely silent as he activated the device. Skulker disappeared, leaving nothing but the wet carpet and the electric smell of ectoplasm behind.

Hours later, Danny took the stars off of his ceiling. He couldn’t get the feeling of glowing empty eyes staring into him, waiting to tear him apart. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters? Releasing in one day? Wild. Do not expect this in the future. Also: oh lore?  
> Anyway this is where that "ghosts are dead people" tag comes into play. I really wanted to say fuck you to butch hartman. anyway, hope you liked it! Leave a comment! tell me what you think!


End file.
